Browse over 9,000 car reviews

New Brisbane Ferrari dealer aims high

Martin Roller aims to sell 40 Ferraris a year at Ferrari Brisbane

Martin Roller has set ambitious sales goals for Ferrari Brisbane.

When he was a boy, Martin Roller used to dream about Ferrari.

Now he has more than he ever dreamed, after landing the Brisbane agency for the famed Italian sports car brand.

It's taken more than two years of negotiations, but the man who built a $100 million empire with 180 employees based on BMW has now got the Italian stallions in his stable.

Roller has already opened a 'pop-up' showroom with a difference inside the upscale Space furniture showroom in Fortitude Valley while he waits for the completion of a purpose-built Ferrari showroom in the new Energex building in Newstead. The total spend on the Ferrari business is more than $7 million.

"I owned a Ferrari 430 Spider and I loved it. I've got my eye on a California convertible," said Roller.

But his Ferrari stable is much bigger, as there are three cars in the pop-up and the dealership layout calls for six cars on the floor at any time.

"Our volume plan for 2015 is 16 new cars. And the Ferrari recommendation is we should sell 1:1 new and secondhand cars."

But Roller, as always, is thinking big after investing in a Brisbane rebuilding program that's already included a monster welcoming party for 350 Ferrari owners and insiders.

"My personal objective is 40 cars, new and used. That's starting from ground zero."

It's a similar approach to the one that has worked so well on the BMW front, now including Mini and the BMW i range of electric cars.

Roller is originally from Melbourne and, at 55, is a new father to Isabella with his partner Renee. His career began with a degree in transport economics and a graduate diplomas in marketing before time at Mazda, in the advertising industry and then 13 years at BMW Australia.

"I moved to Brisbane in 1999 when Lindsay Fox concluded negotiations with the Trivett family for Brisbane BMW. I came with Marvin Burke and we had a 45 per cent stake in the business," Roller said.

"We've grown the BMW business from the seventh or eighth-biggest in Australia through to, in 2013, the biggest. In year one, 1999, we did 700 new and used BMWs, last year we did 2800.

"We have the biggest BMW new and used cars business, with Mini, operating from Ann Street in Fortitude Valley and Westside BMW in Darra."

But there is more to the business than BMW and, in 2011, Roller and his crew took on the Lamborghini franchise for Queensland.

"In the first full year we did 25 new and used cars. The year before it had been three," he said.

But Ferrari was always on his radar, even during a massive buyout of the BMW business by the global Sime Darby Motor Group.

"The timing was a coincidence but Sime Darby is one of the longest standing Ferrari dealers in the world, through Continental Car Sales in New Zealand.

"It's actually taken more than two years since we started talking. Lamborghini gave us a taste of the super-exotic car business but we were always after Ferrari. It's only gathered steam since Ferrari took over direct control from a distributor in 2013, with Herbert Appleroth in charge for Australia."

Roller said he has a clear objective for Ferrari, and for his final two-and-a-half years before the total handover of the BMW business to Sime Darby.

"We've always positioned our BMW business as the best. We want to look after customers, and we've also been very profitable," he said.

"We've worked hard and we've got a great result. We've already got six orders for new Ferraris."

Roller said he is now rooted in Brisbane and, even though he can see a stop date at BMW Brisbane, has no plans for an early retirement at 55.

"I love what I do. I came to Brisbane because that's where the opportunity is. My position has changed somewhat, because we've got an agreement to sell out the balance of our equity.

"But I'm not going to retire. Retirement is not on the radar for me. There is far too much still to do."